Congress got back to work last week. And within the next month, the congressional GOP leadership is expected to move a “bait and switch” scheme that could seriously impact the Second Amendment.

The scheme is called “fast track.”

In “fast track,” Congress passes a bill which delegates to Barack Obama the legislative authority to do anything he wants — ABSOLUTELY ANYTHING — so long as he includes it in a “trade agreement.”

In this case, the trade agreement is the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement (TPP or TPA) — currently being negotiated with thirteen Pacific Rim nations.

The problem is that Congress would delegate this authority to Obama without knowing what was in the top secret agreement — and possibly before it is even completely written.

Gun import bans? Does anyone want to bet that Barack Obama would resist the temptation to sneak these into the TPA? And, if he does, the agreement must be voted on “up-or-down,” with no amendments and no possibility of a Senate filibuster. And every word of the agreement would have the force of law.

It would be one thing for a future pro-gun President to engage in these negotiations. Under such circumstances, GOA would not consider gun owners to have a dog in this fight.

But this President has used his Executive “pen,” time and time again, to circumvent the Congress and the Constitution. Giving him this “fast track” authority is extremely dangerous. And things will only get more difficult when every Establishment interest in Washington starts pushing Congress to immediately approve this “up-or-down” deal.

We saw, with the anti-gun Cromnibus last month, how difficult it is to stop legislation under these circumstances.

So this is another one of those cases where Congress is being told to pass something “so we can find out what’s in it.”

We do know that Obama’s Hollywood friends will be the big beneficiaries of the TPA. We also know that there will be a lot of knee-jerk opposition from liberals, who don’t understand that Obama could stick a few feel-good sentences about the environment or collective bargaining — and spin millions of pages of liberal regulations out of them.

So the bottom line is this: A dozen Senate Republicans opposed to delegating unbridled legislative authority to Obama could squash this deal. But it is important to act now.

Wherever and whenever I can take steps without legislation to [act], that’s what I’m going to do…. I intend to keep trying, with or without Congress, to help stop more [gun-related] tragedies from visiting innocent Americans in our movie theaters, shopping malls, or schools like Sandy Hook. — President Obama’s State of the Union address, January 28, 2014

No doubt, you’ve heard the chilling words above already.

On Tuesday night, the President once again demonstrated that he has zero respect for the Constitution or for our God-given freedoms that are guaranteed by the Bill of Rights.

Obama indicated that if the Congress doesn’t act the way he wants, he’ll pick up his Executive Order pen and write more gun control restrictions into law.

His attorney general, Eric Holder, made a similar statement on Wednesday to legislators on Capitol Hill: “It is [the President’s] intention to again try to work with Congress, but in the absence of meaningful action [on gun control] to explore all the possibilities and use all the powers that he has to.”

Obama is acting like a tyrant, but many of his supporters inside the Beltway don’t care. They are defending him to the Nth degree.

For our part at GOA, we’re sounding the alarm and we’re working within the other two branches of government to rein in the President’s excesses.

And that has some folks upset.

Esquire magazine attacks Gun Owners of America

We recently alerted you to the effort by Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) to restore the right to carry arms in post offices. You guys responded wonderfully to this alert, and they are hearing you loud-n-clear on Capitol Hill.

The issue is still not resolved as the Senate committee postponed action on the underlying bill, in part, because of the Rand Paul amendment. According to The Washington Post, the Paul amendment “require[s] more study.”

In the meantime, gun owners are encouraged to double down in their efforts to contact their Senators.

While the GOA alert found a receptive audience in the gun community, Esquire magazine was horrified and mocked our Tuesday alert, calling us “nutballs” for wanting to reclaim the right to protect ourselves in a Post Office building.

The editors at Esquire share the same fundamental belief as our President, who has nothing but contempt for American gun owners. Remember the President’s derogatory reference to individuals who bitterly “cling to their Bibles or religion”?

The more members we have, the louder our “megaphone” in Washington, D.C., becomes. Help us to drown out the drivel from the political Esquires in the nation’s capital — wherever they may rear their ugly heads.

GOA involved in three Supreme Court cases

Gun Owners of America continues to fight for Second Amendment rights in the courts.

And currently, GOA (and its foundation arm) has three amicus cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. We are fighting:

1) To protect your right to buy/sell firearms. In Abramski v. United States, GOA is challenging the ATF’s definition of a “straw purchase.” The agency has adopted a faulty definition which could, ultimately, threaten to put you in jail for buying a gun from a dealer and then later selling it to a law-abiding family member or friend.

2) To keep you and your guns safe from “no-knock” home raids. With an increasing number of “no-knock” raids occurring around the country — just because the home occupants are known to own guns — GOA is fighting to protect your safety and privacy in Quinn v. Texas.

3) To protect you from indefinite military arrest and detention. In Hedges v. Barack Obama, Gun Owners of America helped file an amicus brief in support of Chris Hedges and other journalists and political activists who are challenging Section 1021 of the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012, which allows American citizens to be subject to secret arrest and indefinite detention by the military, exempt from the protections of the Bill of Rights.

Gun Owners of America

On Friday, Congress sent a $1.1 trillion government funding bill to the President, who promptly signed the legislation into law.

Like every “omnibus,” the bill has a number of gun-related provisions — some pro-gun, some anti-gun. And we suspect that a majority of our members will probably oppose this bloated monstrosity.

That being said, there were some key victories in this bill. So briefly, here are the pros and cons.

THE PROS

THE “OMNIBUS” KILLS THE ARMS TRADE TREATY. In the 113th Congress, we believe we have about twenty votes more than we need to stop ratification of the UN Arms Trade Treaty. This is extremely important because, if implemented, this treaty — signed by the Obama administration — could, without further legislation, result in massive semi-auto and handgun bans, magazine bans, gun registration, and microstamping.

Even though we felt comfortable that we could stop the treaty’s ratification, we were concerned that Obama would attempt to implement it by administrative fiat. For this reason, we drafted language defunding its implementation. With your help, we have spent the last year pushing incessantly for the adoption of this amendment defunding the ATT.

That language is contained on the “Omnibus.” For many of our members, killing the ATT is more important than any other issue.

IT CUTS A LITTLE OBAMACARE MONEY. This is a good thing, since the anti-gun ObamaCare mandate threatens to centralize our medical data, thus resulting in gun bans for millions of people (similar to what’s already been done to more than 150,000 military veterans). While some cuts are certainly welcome, by and large, we are relying on our amendments to bills like the unemployment bill to put a stake through the heart of ObamaCare.

IT CONTAINS A HOST OF (GENERALLY BOILERPLATE) PROVISIONS DEFUNDING OBAMA’S ANTI-GUN ACTIONS. These include a repudiation of the shotgun import ban, other import bans, and changes in various definitions (such as “curios and relics”) which have been eyed by the ATF.

It outlaws programs like Fast & Furious and requires the Congress to report on alleged efforts by our federal government to buy up ammunition.

Finally, while it does contain more money for the Center for Disease Control’s violent crime studies, it continues to prohibit this federal health research money from being used to advocate gun control.

THE CONS

FUNDING FOR ANTI-GUN AGENCIES. The bill contains increased money for a number of programs we don’t like, including:

* $60 million more for NICS (although we succeeded, last year, in preventing the FBI from using NICS to screen every gun purchase in the country);

* $58.5 million for states to submit NICS records;

* $70 million more for the ATF.

CONTINUATION OF ANTI-GUN BOILERPLATE. The bill continues anti-gun boilerplate such as the Senator Schumer amendment defunding the McClure-Volkmer disabilities relief program. This means that thousands upon thousands of Americans who are disqualified from owning firearms because of non-violent federal felonies have no way to get their gun rights back.

REFUSAL TO STICK IN SOME PROVISIONS WE WERE FIGHTING FOR. We would have liked to see language defunding HHS’s new regulations that repeal the HIPAA privacy laws that protect gun owners. This Executive Action means that tens of millions of Americans could lose their gun rights without a court order.

We also would have liked to see a provision defunding the ATF’s efforts to register multiple handgun purchases in the Southwest.

The HIPAA issue is fairly new, and we will continue to fight for these on the regular appropriations bills when they begin to move in May.

THE BOTTOM LINE

Gun control fanatic Michael Bloomberg is trying to do a “victory lap” on the “Omnibus.” In the narratives we have seen, Bloomberg carefully ignores the provisions of the bill which go against him, particularly the provision killing the ATT.

This is certainly a desperate effort by a defeated man to appear “relevant,” rather than a legitimate assessment of who won or who lost.

The “most popular” part of the proposed Senate gun control bill (background checks) sounds like a good idea at first but is more restrictive than anyone anticipated and will have significant unintended consequences.

There is a huge push to get it through Congress before the public has a chance to consider its contents.

Common activities that we take for granted will become federal crimes. These are not irresponsible exaggerations. Please take a moment to review the requirements of the bill.

Here are a few examples of the restrictions in the bill:

EXAMPLE #1
Loaning your buddy a shotgun for a duck hunting trip will be considered a transfer. If the following requirements are not met, YOU HAVE BOTH COMMITTED A FEDERAL CRIME.

1. He must have already purchased his hunting license
2. Season is already open (and will not close before he returns it)
3. He cannot travel with the firearm through a county where season is not yet open or any area where hunting is prohibited and certainly not across a state line.

He CANNOT stop by your house on the day before season opens, pick up the shot gun, go to the sporting goods store to buy a license and shells then drive out to the hunting lease. In this scenario, YOU BOTH WOULD HAVE COMMITTED MULTIPLE FEDERAL CRIMES, YOUR WEAPONS WILL BE FORFEITED AND YOU WILL LOOSE YOUR RIGHT TO BUY OR OWN A FIREARM.

EXAMPLE #2
It appears that only you may relocate your weapons. If your weapon leaves your home without you, the new legislation considers it a transfer of possession. ALL transfers require going through a firearms dealer, paying the transfer fee and a background check for the transferee.

Putting the weapon, even temporarily in someone else’s possession, requires a transfer through a dealer. There is no exception for putting them in a friend’s truck while moving to your new house or packing them unloaded, locked in a gunsafe into a moving truck.

Any scenario in which your weapon leaves your home without you is considered a transfer. Failure to properly transfer the weapon is a federal crime which can result in a prison term AND WILL RESULT IN THE FORFEITURE OF YOUR WEAPON.

In the scenario above, your buddy’s truck was used to commit a federal crime and WILL BE CONFISCATED just like with current Fish and Game violations.

EXAMPLE #3

Infractions as above which involve 2 guns of any type are considered weapons trafficking. You will be prosecuted under the same federal laws as a terrorist arms dealer.

EXAMPLE #4

Any of the infractions above (or hundreds of other routine scenarios) may result in federal charges, confiscation of ALL your weapons and being prohibited, like all felons, from ever owning a weapon again.

Please read the text of the bill yourself. Most of it is boring legalese but the sections on transfers and trafficking are critical.

Take a minute to think about all the routine activities like those above that will make you a federal criminal and result in prison time plus the confiscation of your weapons and other property.

A link to the bill is included below on the official Senate website. See Section 122 “Firearms Transfers”.

Read it and call your congressman’s office. Talk to their staff. Tell them how you feel about this.

Keep in mind, none of the above would have stopped the tragedy’s in Columbine or Newtown. The proposed law makes you a criminal and opens the door for confiscation of your weapons and property for otherwise routine activities.

Think and act. Congress is hoping that you will do neither.

If you found the patience to read the entire text, you also learned that exactly $100 million per year of your tax money is set aside to enforce these restrictions.